


HOMECOMING GAME

by ivorygates



Series: Hotel Sex [2]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Crossover, M/M, Partner Betrayal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-22
Updated: 2009-09-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 16:25:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/611827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And then Daniel comes home from New York.</p>
            </blockquote>





	HOMECOMING GAME

_"You think you can leave the stories wrapped up in the dirty sheets at the hotel." _  
-– Scarlette Skye__

 

 

Sunday afternoon.

Home in record time.

Especially considering he wasn't supposed to be home until Wednesday.

Call it a tactical retreat.

He even got to spend a few hours at the Hatshepsut Exhibit at the Met before his flight out. So it doesn't seem quite so much as if he's panicked and bolted.

Although he knows he has.

Did everything he wanted to in New York. Attended the Symposium. Took notes. Cheated on his lover.

So why doesn't he feel better about things?  
  
Because cheating isn't the escape he'd thought it would be. It's just a further complication. And usually Daniel likes complications. He always has. Puzzles inside puzzles; they've always fascinated him. He probably would have chosen Archaeology and Linguistics for that very reason. Even if he hadn't been following in his parents' footsteps.

But now he's become a puzzle to himself, and he doesn't like that.

Descension was supposed to solve that once and for all. Deciding that his place was here, in the world. Becoming a part of the world at last. Or making up his mind to the inevitability of it, really, though it took dying half a dozen times and spending a year as something very like a god to reconcile him to the inevitability of being human.

And it has. More or less. 'There's no place like home,' as Jack would say. He's accepted that.

He just doesn't really like it.

The cab pulls up in front of his apartment. He pays the driver off and goes inside.

That's another thing.

Apartment.

When he got back from being what Jack persists in calling 'all glowy' (as if it had been some sort of disease) he'd bought a house. The final step to adulthood, because well-adjusted grownups were supposed to own houses, and coming back from the dead should mean you were thoroughly mature. Sam and Jack both owned houses, after all, and they were the closest thing to adult role models that existed in his world. Sam had even helped him pick it out; a nice Mission-style bungalow, easy to care for.

Of course, he didn't have much to put in it, because nearly everything he'd used to own was gone, courtesy of being more-or-less dead for a year. They'd known he wasn't _actually_ dead. But they also pretty much assumed he was never coming back.

He'd had to rebuild his life from salvaged bits and pieces.

About as easy as it sounds.

Something he's done too many times.

And home ownership hadn't really _fit._ The lawn and yard had played hell with his allergies, the neighbors had been too intrusive, wondering what a lone bachelor was doing in the midst of all their domestic couplehood and constantly trying to pair him up. And worst of all, it was a nice family neighborhood. Quiet. Which meant noisy, filled with children and dogs.

He likes both, but not when he's trying to sleep.

He's used to long silent nights of study. _Not_ followed by the early morning cheer of Suburbia. Banging car-doors. Children at play. It's good to know that the world goes on, but … not under his bedroom window, please.

So when Sarah (Osirus, really) came back and crashed his party so thoroughly, he was glad to take the excuse to move. Retreating, once more, into the quieter (by comparison), gardenless anonymity of another city apartment. Where there are coffee shops and dry cleaners' within a few blocks walk. And the neighbors smile, but don't stop to chat.

Where Jack can come and go unnoticed.

Though Jack spends neither more nor less time at Daniel's place, nor Daniel at Jack's, than either of them did before they became … whatever it is they are to each other.

Lovers, Daniel thinks.

He doesn't know what Jack thinks.

Though he knows Jack loves him.

It would probably, he thinks, be easier if he didn't know that. Because it raises too many questions.

He's always been more comfortable loving than being loved.

He supposes, if he's brutally honest, that he doesn't actually believe in love. Not with himself as the object. Sha're was the last time. Sort of an experiment. He tried being loved, and look what happened. He's willing to love others. He can't help it, in fact. But though he almost always believes in reciprocal conditions – experience has taught him they're a fact of life: you push, they shove – he can't bring himself to believe in this one. It just seems wrong.

Another of his very personal failings, but he's gotten used to those.

He walks through the apartment, dropping his bag on the bed, and goes to make coffee. Dr. Jackson's tropism for coffee is legendary and well-known. Over the years coffee has kept him awake and put him to sleep, stopped him from thinking and reminded him of home. _Been_ home, in fact, when home was nothing more than the taste of coffee and a life lived out of a couple of battered suitcases.

While he waits for the coffeemaker to cycle he wanders back into the bedroom again. Might as well unpack.

He glances toward the bathroom, thinking of taking a shower. He showered this morning, though. And last night.

_Standing under the water until his shoulders felt bruised by the heat, trying to wash away, not the memory of the hotel room sex, but the memory of the harsh banter with the man sitting on the hotel room bed._

If he closes his eyes, he can hear it now.

It feels like hands on his skin.

He hadn't even called the man by his first name.

And it's not what he wants to want.

But he learned a long time ago that you can't always have what you want. And, even longer in the past, that you can't always want what's good for you.

If you could, he'd never have wanted to dream of alien spaceships, would he?

He decides against another shower, knowing it won't help. Puts away his clothing with quick efficiency – jackets and shoes back into the closet, dry cleaning to its allotted corner, laundry to the hamper. Strips off the clothing he wore on the plane and pulls on a set of sweat pants and a thin cotton tank top.

Puts the bag back onto the shelf, ready for its next outing.

Goes back out into the living room.

Jack is walking in through the front door.

Jack has keys, of course. Jack has keys to Sam's place, too. Any keys he doesn't have, he can borrow from the SGC; Jack could enter the home of anyone working at Stargate Command pretty much at will. Rank Hath Its Privileges. Jack rarely abuses them.

He stops when he sees Daniel, and for just a split instant, before the recognition, there's a cold flicker of assessment as Jack decides whether to go for his gun. It's never really that far below the surface: threat assessment and conditioned response. Sometimes Daniel wonders who Jack would have been without the military training, and if he would have liked that man better.

He wonders if the Jack that Could Have Been would have had any time for Dr. Daniel Jackson at all.

But then Jack recognizes him – no threat – and just looks puzzled. He walks the rest of the way inside and closes the door. Locks it.

Jack O'Neill is nothing if not inconsistent. The man never locks his own doors. Has been known to wander off for a week-long mission leaving his house unlocked. Yet from day one he has badgered Daniel relentlessly about the vital necessity of locking every door and window and keeping them locked. As if the entire universe is relentlessly bent upon the extinction of Daniel Jackson.

There are times that it seems to be. But rarely here. Almost always on the other side of the Gate. Even the appendicitis that bought him a week's stay in the Infirmary started offworld.

"What are you doing here?" Daniel asks at last.

"Ran out of milk," Jack answers easily. But he still looks puzzled at Daniel's presence. Even though it's Daniel's living room, and if one of them has a right to be here, surely it's Daniel.

Only Daniel wasn't supposed to be home until Wednesday, and Jack knows it.

Knows Daniel likes New York, and academic conferences, and getting away from the hermetic secret world of the SGC.

"So you came _here?"_

There are at least a dozen stores between Daniel's apartment and Jack's house.

"I figured whatever you had'd go bad by Wednesday."

Jack walks past him into the kitchen.

They know each other's homes as well as they know each others' bodies.

"I'm out of coffee, too," Jack announces, seeing the pot.

"Anything else?" Daniel asks.

This is a game they've played before. But usually he's needed to be here to play it, and there's no way Jack could have known he'd be here.

"Beer."

"I hate beer."

There's no beer here. When Jack comes over, he brings his own.

"You drink beer."

"You _force_ me to drink beer. There's a difference."

Jack ignores this – as he ignores any conversation in which he is not immediately interested. You'd be making a mistake, however, to assume he isn't listening. Daniel hasn't made that mistake for years. Jack listens closely to everything. He'll bring up a remark long after you've forgotten making it. Assuming it's caught his interest. Or he feels it's tactically necessary. Or he finds it entertaining.

Right now he's rummaging through Daniel's cupboards, looking for mugs.

"If you want beer, you're out of luck," Daniel says, just to keep the conversation going. And to keep it away, as long as possible, from the question that's going to come up. Eventually. Or not at all. But that's still going to sit in the middle of whatever they _do_ talk about like an invisible elephant.

_What'cha doin' back so early, Daniel?_

_Oh, I don't know, Jack. What are_ you _doing here?_

"Got beer in the truck. Stopped on the way," Jack says.

He's found a couple of mugs he likes and is pouring coffee. Years of military coffee have convinced him to ruin every cup of coffee he drinks with stunning amounts of milk and sugar. Hardly coffee at all. More of a sweetened dairy soup with caffeine.

But he knows exactly how Daniel likes his own coffee, and prepares it scrupulously to Daniel's taste.

Daniel thinks about what Jack has just said.

If Jack stopped for beer, he obviously didn't come over here for milk, although he is notoriously cheap and would certainly steal the milk out of Daniel's refrigerator rather than going out and buying some. But even gas stations sell milk. As well as beer.

Jack turns and hands him the mug. Daniel takes his coffee out into the living room. Jack follows.

Anyone else would ask how the Symposium had gone. Daniel knows Jack doesn't care. If it's tactically pertinent, Daniel and General Hammond between them will force him to listen. Otherwise, all it means to Jack is that Daniel went off somewhere to do Something With Science and now he's back.

Daniel takes an equivalent interest in hockey games.

He goes and sits on the couch, not bothering to turn on the living room lights. Late afternoon sunlight filters through the curtains.

Jack takes the chair.

#

There could be talking, but Jack isn't actually much for small talk. Long silences – some companionable, some dark - that's Jack O'Neill's style. When he does talk, it's usually about things so completely irrelevant – sports, the weather – that it might as well be in some kind of alien language. Over the years, Daniel has only managed to decode the basics. _I'm fine. I'm upset. I'm worried._

Digging for the details has always been uncomfortable for both of them. Daniel does it sometimes.

Right now Jack is quiet, and that gives him no clues at all. A silence, but not quite a companionable one. Jack is thinking about something, and even after eight-something years, Daniel really doesn't know how Jack's mind works.

He's the military voice of SG-1, but he's defied the orders of both General Hammond and the Pentagon more times than Daniel can count. His mission orders are to acquire weapons, but Daniel has seen him put saving people's lives ahead of acquiring weapons time after time. Or just … doing the right thing. Not helping Alar's people. Not exploiting Tonane's.

Though he and Daniel fought over both, until Jack came down on the right side in the end.

They sit in Daniel's living room and drink their coffee, and Daniel wonders what's going to happen next.

Kisses and confession?

He doesn't know what he wants to confess.

_I don't want anyone else, but I don't want you to love me?_

_When you give me what I think I want – when you're off fucking someone else – I can't stand that either?_

_I tried for a breathing space, and all I did was come running back here. We'll be picking out china and linens next._

Jack can't do that.

Can never do that.

Even if that's what Daniel wants.

Daniel doesn't know what he wants.

He drinks his coffee.

#

Nine years he's known Daniel, if you're counting from the time Jack was General West's XO and they all went off on the first Abydos Mission. In that time the two of them have been all sorts of things to each other. Strangers. Enemies. Comrades.

Lovers.

Hadn't seen that coming the first time he'd laid eyes on Dr. Jackson.

He'd always known Dannyboy was a little light on his feet. It was there in his file. Catherine knew, and didn't see why anyone should care. Of course, it was a civilian project back then. Academics. Faggots and geeks.

And then the geek faggot saved his life on Abydos, got Jack's team home, _and_ married the princess.

Another thing Jack didn't see coming.

So he left Dannyboy on Abydos, figuring that _one_ of them should be happy, and went back to Earth to finish taking apart what was left of his life. Buried his marriage next to his son. Buried his career, too. All over and done.

And then a year later things went to hell and Daniel was back. And if the princess wasn't quite dead, well, the odds were longer every year against any happily ever after for the two of them.

And meanwhile there'd been SG-1.

New career. New life.

And every time he got to watch Daniel die – again – well, he hadn't liked it much.

You were supposed to care, but not too much.

They taught you that at the Academy.

They taught you a lot of things.

Married officers advance faster than unmarried ones.

An officer needs an officer's wife.

If you want to make Captain, Major, Colonel, you marry as soon as you can. A suitable girl.

And you keep any other interests you might have firmly under the radar.

You choose.

The Air Force or a piece of ass.

The Air Force taught him to fly. And then it taught him to kill. He'd used everything it taught him. On others. On himself.

Sara had been his lifeline. His normal world. The life like his parents' that he was supposed to want. Simple and uncomplicated. Where everyone knew their assigned duties.

Then that life was gone.

He looks at the side of Daniel's neck. The living room is shadowy; the only light comes through the curtained windows. Daniel's skin is pale, and Jack thinks, randomly, of camo cream. A hundred alien planets and Daniel never tans. He stands out like a beacon wherever they go. Jack should talk to him about making sure to keep camo cream in his pack. Carter does. He'll tell her to remind him. Hell, maybe he'll even write a memo. Carter will probably have it framed.

When he got SG-1, he fell in love with both his kids. The thing you were never supposed to do. Sam Carter and Daniel Jackson; young and brilliant and beautiful. And he couldn't touch either of them.

Only… Carter knew it and accepted it and Daniel never – quite – did.

Daniel fell in love right back.

There was a limit to the number of times he could watch Daniel die. Watch him die, accept that he was dead, mourn him… and then have him come back from the dead…

Before Jack couldn't be a good little officer any more.

Never much good at that in the first place, really.

He'd tried.

Knowing he wasn't very good at the only thing he was any good at at all.

Why else retire twice?

Oh, he was an excellent tactician. A fine motivator and leader of men. His performance reports all said so.

That was how he'd made Colonel.

They also said he had problems with authority and difficulty following orders.

That's true, too.

Stupid orders, stupid officers. He has no respect for either.

The Air Force says you're supposed to follow the orders no matter what they are. And no matter who gives them.

He never quite could.

Case in point? Abydos.

Where Daniel died the first time.

Where Daniel started to mean too much to him.

He doesn't even know how many times Daniel's actually died, by now, because he doesn't want to remember.

And now they're here.

Drinking coffee and not talking.

He'd rather not talk. It's not that he's afraid of what Daniel might say. He just doesn't want to hear it.

At least Daniel's here – back, safe - and Jack didn't walk in to find the place full of strange men with guns. He checks on the place when Daniel's away, anyway, just… because.

As if keeping Daniel's apartment secure will keep Daniel secure.

Eight years in a military program and Daniel still hasn't bought a clue.

He hasn't got the least notion that his SGC-issued credit card lit up like a Christmas tree when the change in flight reservation hit it, and that Jack, his CO, was automatically notified.

SOP. And if he wants to start a nice argument now, Jack can explain it. And get another lecture about how Daniel isn't a child and can take care of himself. And Jack can explain that this is just how the military works. And Daniel won't give a damn. Daniel is impervious to information that he thinks shouldn't be true, and what Daniel knows – as Jack knows - is that Daniel doesn't like the way the military works, most of the time. Its methods. Its goals.

Its needs.

He supposes he shouldn't have come over. Should have let Daniel call. Or not.

But he was worried.

Reason to be.

The military functions on the basis of two things: blind obedience and willful ignorance. He tried explaining that to Daniel once and got a long lecture on pillars that made absolutely no sense to him at all.

But it's true.

'Don't ask, don't tell' has a much wider application than people think. In the military, you find out a lot of things – about your friends, your officers, your missions - that you just weren't supposed to know.

So you pretend you don't know them.

Better for everyone that way.

And when you get your orders, you follow them and don't ask why.

He's usually tried to do both, over the years.

Don't ask. Don't tell.

A code that defined his life long before he … fell.

But there are things he knows about Daniel that are so obvious that they don't even have to be mentioned.

One, that Daniel has never run from a fight in his life, so whatever has sent him pelting back here 48 hours ahead of schedule, it wasn't a fight.

And two, that Daniel bruises like a ripe peach.

He saw the bracelet of bruises around Daniel's wrist in the kitchen. Right wrist. Daniel's right handed.

So somebody grabbed him in New York, because the bruises weren't there when he left.

Now, in the living room, as Daniel sits silently, turned away from him, he sees the bruises on Daniel's left shoulder and back.

Partly hidden beneath the shirt, but not completely.

Finger marks.

He has a sudden vivid image of a hand on Daniel's shoulder, forcing him to his knees.

Knowing it wouldn't take force.

He closes his eyes for just an instant, then opens them, keeping his face blank.

There was … someone … in New York.

He feels a moment of, not jealousy, but weary exasperation. It isn't safe. Daniel thinks nobody knows who he is, or cares, but they do. And Daniel's head is stuffed full of useful intelligence: the language of the Ancients, of the _Goa'uld,_ hundreds of Gate addresses, the secrets of a thousand alien cultures. Daniel can't build weapons, it's true, but there are more than enough weapons already out there, and he can help someone make them work.

If he's forced to.

 _That_ would take force.

Daniel will break before he'll bend.

Carter's an equally vulnerable asset. But she knows it, and protects herself.

Daniel?

Convinced he's Lamont Cranston; invisible. Taking risks so far beyond stupid that there aren't even words to describe them. Dr. Daniel Jackson _defines_ the concept of 'security risk', and despite that, Jack has fought to keep him a part of the Program since Day One.

Since long before the time _he_ became part of the problem.

Hiding in plain sight. Leading a double life. He's done that all his life. Compartmentalized. Everything in neat little boxes. Work and play. Home and missions. Girls and boys. He opens one box and closes the other so effortlessly that he hardly notices that he does it any more. Friday night poker sessions with the guys, going on about the pretty new waitress down at the diner, and Andy's cousin is up from Denver for the weekend and hey, Jack, what do you say?

Just another compartment. Because it was logical, and reasonable, and obvious to take the Sheriff's lonely pretty cousin out for dinner and a movie.

And back to his place.

It fit his cover story. It fit his cover _life._

It meant nothing in particular to either of them. He's always liked women.

He's done similar things before. He'll do them again.

It would look a little odd if he didn't.

He knows about cover stories. About living a not-quite-lie.

Just a truth you can't tell.

Is that what Daniel wants? Truth?

Both Daniel and Carter hate to lie, though both of them have lied for the Program over the years.

Jack just hates being lied to. There's a difference.

Though he's pretty sure he's been lied to. By the Program. And has accepted it. Just as Daniel and Carter have accepted the need to lie.

But none of them likes compromising with the truth.

If he and Daniel called it off, this thing of theirs, now, here, this minute, would it make a difference? Would Daniel take any better care of himself? Would he find some nice girl and settle down? Or even some nice boy? The SGC would turn a blind eye if the relationship was stable and the nice boy passed his security review.

If Jack promised him a rose-covered cottage and a white picket fence, would it change anything?

It's hard to imagine. Not living openly with Daniel, but just _living._

He'd always expected to be dead by now.

In Special Ops you don't think too far ahead. If you're thinking too hard about trying to stay alive you're no good in the field.

As for the Stargate Program…

The Teams have a projected fifty percent mortality rate over a twelve month period. At a conservative estimate. And SG-1 _has_ died.

They just haven't stayed dead.

But they're all living on borrowed time now. And things will be changing at the SGC soon. General Hammond was a month away from retirement on the day Apophis waltzed through the Gate the first time. That was eight years ago. Hammond won't be in the Big Chair forever. In fact, he's been talking about retirement more and more often lately.

Whoever takes his place isn't likely to be as … forgiving.

Of Jack. Of Daniel. Hell, even of Carter, who keeps forgetting that the SGC isn't her own personal Science Fair. And the NID still wants to get its hands on Teal'c, even if it's just for old times' sake now.

Hammond has protected them all over the years. His replacement probably won't.

It might be time to call it a day. Retire. Again. Let someone else save Earth's collective butt.

He's tired.

Or maybe the only thing he's tired of is watching Daniel do his moth-dance. Because he's never really been sure what Daniel wanted from him in the first place.

He loves Daniel.

Dangerous, because it's not safe and conventional, like loving Sara. It's something that takes him places that start with blackmail and end with prison, because even though the Air Force _ought_ simply to offer him the chance to quietly resign his commission if this came out, Jack – and the Program – have made too many powerful and well-connected enemies down through the years. They'd logroll this into a host of other charges, some with more than a grain of truth to them, and 'sodomy' wouldn't even appear on the official charge-list at the trial.

Though everyone would know.

But he loves Daniel.

Enough to die for him? That just goes with the job; it's nothing special. Enough to break his sworn oaths for him? Yes. That's for Daniel alone.

But it doesn't seem to be quite enough.

He always knew what Sara wanted.

He just couldn't give it to her, at the end.

The line has long since blurred – in his mind, with Daniel - between commander and lover. But there are ways in which the two things aren't so different, especially for a field unit that sees heavy combat.

He wants what's best for Daniel, in every way.

And he wants to keep him alive.

Maybe 'happy' just isn't possible. Not after all the years and all the losses.

He sets down his coffee cup.

"I should be getting back," he says, getting to his feet.

Daniel stands and stretches. He reaches out to set the coffee cup on the table at the end of the couch, and as he does, Jack sees him see the bruises on his own wrist. He watches as Daniel holds out his hand and arm to the daylight. Not really inspecting the bruises themselves – he has to have seen them before – but inspecting the extent of what Jack has seen.

Sighs, as if coming back from some place far away.

"You don't have to go," he says, getting up off the couch and walking over until he's standing in front of Jack.

"Getting late," Jack says, though it really isn't.

Daniel shakes his head, as if, for once, words have failed him, and Jack thinks that's a very good thing, because he doesn't really want to hear anything Daniel might have to say. It might involve explanations. Information.

"Stay," Daniel says. Not an order. Jack's the one who gives the orders. And Daniel … generally considers them open to interpretation.

There's really nothing for Jack to say. No questions he wants to ask. No answers he wants to hear. Instead he reaches up and puts his hand on Daniel's shoulder, covering the bruises there.

And Daniel takes a last step forward.

He tastes of coffee.

###

**Author's Note:**

> I think I mentioned elsewhere that I don't know when to leave well enough alone? Wanting to know what happens next is my besetting sin.


End file.
